Laudator Temporis Acti

H. Lloyd-Jones and N.G. Wilson, Sophocles: Second Thoughts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), p. 9:

Some of our reviewers have complained of our occasional sharp criticisms of other scholars. It would be pleasant if scholars were always nice about one another, but such a state of affairs would have its bad as well as its good side. One is often told that Housman and other scholars noted for severe criticism of their colleagues have been neurotics working off their personal repressions, but even if true this would not mean that all severe criticism was discredited. Classical scholarship is closely linked with education, and anyone concerned with education must aim at the elimination of certain common faults. An editor or commentator who buries his head in the sand and ignores the well-established fact that the manuscripts in which classical texts are preserved are often corrupt is failing in his professional duty, even if he can be credited with having collected some useful information. So too, though less culpably, is an editor or commentator who is handicapped by bad taste and defective appreciation of literature, as may be the case even with scholars of admirable energy and ingenuity that entitle them to respect. Against these failings a teacher has a duty to warn his pupils, and a scholar has a duty to warn his readers.